Europe

Only two months after the swearing in of the Red-Green government, that
had been re-elected to office only by the narrowest of margins,
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) threatened his resignation. Speaking
to the Executive of his Social Democratic Party on December 10, he said:
"Anyone who thinks they can do a better job should go ahead and do it."

One week previously he had noticeably complained about the "Cacophony"
(disharmony) in the governing SPD / Green coalition.

In the federal parliamentary elections on September 22, the government
led by Chancellor Schröder and Foreign Minister Fischer had barely
managed to get by with a bloody nose. The German parliamentary term
lasts four years - however, it is more than questionable whether the
coalition will survive this whole period. Never before in the history of
the Federal Republic has a government slipped so deeply into trouble in
such a short space of time.

Economic crisis, a wave of bankruptcies and redundancies, record debts,
financial collapse on state and local level, token strikes and strike
threats in the public services, demonstrations and protests against
armament and war preparations. In workplaces, in the trade unions, in
schools and universities, something is brewing. At the same time,
government and capital are in an open conflict over what to do next. The
development of consciousness among workers, the unemployed and young
people, which up until now only progressed gradually, is gaining pace
significantly and coming more and more to the surface. In the current
pay dispute for public sector employees on federal, state and local
level, the union leadership sees itself forced to adopt a fighting tone.
With the workers and young people of Italy, Spain and other parts of
Europe having returned to the stage of class struggle in an impressive
manner over the last 12 months, the polarisation of the classes is
gaining pace in Germany too. The current privileged and removed
leadership of the labour movement will from now on be less and less able
to restrain militancy and stall resistance.

On the verge of a new recession

Germany is the third most powerful economy in the world. It is the
number one in the European Union: Germany contributes 20% of the Gross
Domestic Product of the EU. But what was once an economic giant is now
wobbling. In the following year, Germany will for the fourth year in a
row be bottom of the EU table in terms of increase of GDP. The downturn
on the stock market also overshadows anything witnessed in any of the
other leading economies: between January and October, the Deutsche
Aktienindex (the index of the shares of 30 of the largest companies
listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange) dropped by 48%; despite the fact
that the Dax recovered slightly since then, it was unable to reverse
these losses by December.

The economic crisis of the economic giant that is Germany now poses a
serious threat to the future of the European Monetary Union. The level
of newly incurred public debt for this year is significantly above the 3
per cent of GDP allowed by the EU stability pact (this prompted
EU-Commission President Prodi to describe the pact as "stupid"). Next
year, the target will only be met if the German economy grows by 1,5 per
cent, a growth level that all economic research institutes regard as
illusory. Not only the level of new debt, but also the total public debt
leaves the federal government in breach of the convergence criteria.
Germany is the fourth EU country after Greece, Italy and Belgium to
amass a national debt in excess of the permitted 60% of the GDP (the
total debt for 2002 is 62%). The capitalist downturn has meant that the
national debt in Germany, already massively increased by the costs of
reunification, has more than doubled during the 1990s, reaching a level
of 1,2 billion euro.

A landslide from this mountain of debt is already rolling towards
taxpayers - 170 million euro every day, just to pay for the interest. In
an adaptation of the metaphor of the "sick man at the Bosporus" used at
the beginning of the 20th century, the Financial Times wrote on the 17th
of November about the "sick man in Berlin".

Investment in Germany has been decreasing since the year 2000. Last
year, the consumer sector, the second pillar of the economic upturn,
collapsed. Only foreign trade has saved the stagnating German economy
from a deep recession. One third of the German economy is dependent on
the export market for survival. In the car industry which employs 750
000 people, the figure is as high as 70%. This means that Germany is
particularly dependent on the US economic cycle.

With the German economy already having nose-dived last year, a further
plunge into recession looms these next few months. Industrial production
declined by 2,1% in October (the largest fall since March 2001), having
already decreased in September. By now, "negative growth" of industry is
already being expected for the fourth quarter of this year. This has
lead more and more economists to abandon all hope for the first six
months of next year. Between now and the middle of 2003, Germany faces
at best a phase of stagnation, which could well lead to a new downturn.
Even Robert Prior from the HSBC Group said: "We’re not very far away
from a new recession in Germany" (Handelsblatt 10th December 2002).

All this adds up to an expected figure of 42.000 expected bankruptcies
for the year 2003. Already this year, 37,000 companies went bust,
including large firms such as Kirch Media, Babcock, Fairchild Dornier
and Herlitz.

This wave of bankruptcies cost 650 000 employees their job. In the last
month alone, the number of unemployed exploded by more than 230,000 to
reach a level of 4,030,000. Since the recession in West Germany in the
mid-seventies, unemployment in the Federal Republic has doubled in every
economic crisis.

Deutsche Telekom wants to get rid of 54 000 jobs, 36.000 railway
employees jobs are at risk, Siemens intends to destroy 35 000 jobs
worldwide, Alcatel-SEL wants to get rid of 10 000 employees over the
next two years...

"The money isn’t gone - it’s ’just’ somewhere else", was the message on
a self-painted sign displayed during the first token strike in Berlin to
mark the beginning of pay negotiations for the public sector on December
11th. Indeed it is true that under Red-Green government, corporate
taxation has been transformed from a tax on businesses to a subsidy for
businesses: in the year 2000, the state took in EUR 25 billion, in 2001,
EUR 400 million were actually paid out to large companies. Today, a
nurse or a refuse collector has to cough up more taxes than
DaimlerChrysler or BMW. Incidentally, BMW is the largest industrial
company in Munich. While BMW made a net profit of 1.1 billion euro last
year, Munich, the third largest city in Germany, is bankrupt. This makes
Gerhard Schröder the first Chancellor to govern in times of massive
disintegration. Local councils such as Offenbach in the state of Hesse
have plans which, for example, include letting 88 schools be run by
private companies "according to the British example" as a means of
reducing public spending.

In the 1990s, the Gross Domestic Product grew by a total of 15%. At the
same time, net profits doubled while workers net income went down.

Dismantling of social security systems looms

"The two men who lead the country, Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer,
can’t decide how. Highly contradictory messages are sent to the people.
One says: The situation is serious, we have to do some difficult things,
but we will protect you from fundamental changes. Germany can, in
principle, stay like it was. Doing without certain things is a temporary
phenomenon. That is the signal from the Social Democrats and the Trade
Unions.

"The other says: The situation is serious, we have to do some difficult
things, but the really fundamental reforms have yet to come. Germany
will never be the same again. The - modest - sacrifices - will be
permanent." (Berlin Tagesspiegel, December 11th 2002).

It is true that desperation, caused by the state of public finances and
the strait jacket of the EU stability pact, was the defining motive
behind the first drafts of legislation presented by the new old
government. Government and business interests are publicly arguing over
a common political line. Despite this, Schröder’s cabinet is definitely
bowing to the interests of Capital.

"The miracle is not a normal category in politics. But what is happening
among the German Social Democrats is a break with all previous
experience of Berlin political life. Suddenly, the SPD accepts
everything that for years was denounced as capitalist demonism.

"A low wage sector bitterly resisted up until now ... a worker’s rights
law such as that against artificial self-employment is dropped en
passant onto the scrap heap of German social history. Mini-jobs are no
longer only acceptable in so far as they involve housewives working in a
shop for a short few hours, ... Even the ideological nonsense that even
low earners should avail of the blessings of an independent pension
scheme and therefore mini-job employees should have a right to a
pension, seems to be vanishing in thin air" (Handelsblatt, December 13th
2002).

What the mouthpiece of medium sized business describes as a "miracle" is
no more than a confirmation of the analysis Marxists made during the
1990s that the German Social Democrat Party, just like the British
Labour Party, has changed from a worker’s party with a bourgeois
leadership into a bourgeois party through and through. The SPD and the
Greens have laid the foundations for loading the burden of this crisis
of the capitalist system onto the backs of the working class. It’s not
about "limited sacrifices"; it’s about unlimited cutbacks, a massacre of
cutbacks. If the plans of Capital become reality, Germany will indeed
"never be the same again". All social rights that were fought for and
won are now under fire, the "Welfare state", or whatever is left of it,
is to be dismantled.

Indeed, it was in the particularly business-friendly daily newspaper
Handelsblatt that Chancellor Schröder on December 16th gave a statement
under a headline that amounts to a promise "We will cut back on
benefits". Schröder’s exclusive statement began with the sentence: "The
Chancellor goes on the offensive: in the light of the disastrous state
of the labour market and the unsatisfactory growth prospects, the
Chancellor puts his trust in reforms, mostly regarding social welfare
systems." These "reforms" are in fact counter-reforms, which mean the
beginning of the end for the social welfare systems which were fought
for and won by the labour movement during the Bismarck era in the last
third of the 19th century.

For weeks, the re-introduction of the wealth tax, abolished by the last
Kohl government, was under discussion. State and local SPD politicians
who feared losing out in their own elections due to the nation-wide drop
in popularity of their party, tried to score points with this
suggestion. Schröder abruptly ended the debate on this tax, which would
bring an estimated 16 billion euro extra of public funds. Instead, the
taxation of interest is to be changed. However this is, in fact, a
further tax handout for the bosses, since the new law means that the
level of taxation of interest from capital gains will be below the level
of tax paid by a working person’s household. Apart from this, there are
also plans for a generous amnesty for tax evaders (overall, no
substantial extra revenue for the public purse is expected).

While Capital applauds these measures, the SPD gave in. The previous
measures of the Red-Green government went nowhere near far enough for
the German capitalist class. Despite this, the working class is not only
subjected to individual attacks, rather there has been a real wave of
attacks in the few weeks since the election (this wave will grow in
magnitude after the state elections in Hesse and Lower Saxony on 2nd
February 2003).

These include:

a "Savings package" to the tune of 13 billion euro: increases in VAT,
cutbacks on homeowner’s allowance, increase in contributions to
unemployment and pensions insurance, etc.

the application of the plans of the "Hartz Commission" on employment:
means testing of unemployment benefit according to the partner’s
income, a huge increase in the use of temporary work with pay
reductions of 20-30% in the first weeks as well as a removal of the
protection against unlawful dismissal to name but a few of its
measures.

the setting up of the "Rürup Commission". Just like with "Hartz", this
is the creation of a commission of representatives from the
government, business and trade unions who want to apply cuts to social
security. Their goal is a separation between optional and compulsory
treatments in the health service and increasing the retirement age.

the pensions swindle: an increase in pensions contributions from 19,1
to 19,5%.

an "Emergency package" in the health service: A freeze on pay for
doctors and on funding for hospitals, a halving of the death grant
etc. with the aim of saving 3.5 billion euro annually.

the undermining of the legislation on shop opening times: moving shop
closing time on Saturdays from 4 to 8pm.

in the current pay negotiation round in the public sector the
employers, all SPD and CDU politicians, make threats of a pay freeze,
pay cuts, cutbacks in holiday entitlements and Christmas bonuses, plus
an extension of working hours and redundancies. Furthermore they are
threatening national collective wage agreements. They want so-called
"Opening clauses" in the wage agreements to allow them to renegotiate
previously agreed settlements. Furthermore there is discussion of the
idea of cities and municipalities leaving the national association of
local authority public sector employers and negotiating their own,
local, deals.

the capital city, Berlin, is already seeing a dismantling of social
security. The Berlin city government (the Senate) of SPD and PDS (the
Party of Democratic Socialism, successor of the former Stalinist state
party in East Germany) is playing the role of trailblazer for such
measures all over Germany. Already Berlin is leaving national the
association of local authority employers at the beginning of 2003,
cancelling collective wage agreements for its staff effective from the
end of 2003, extending civil servants and teachers working hours by
two hours from February 2003, cutting back on 950 educational staff in
crèches, etc. The motto of Mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD) is,
appropriately enough: "Saving until it squeaks".

Panic in the Government camp

"When more boys are born than girls, the old people used to say, there’s
a war coming. When the theatres start playing Brecht that means: crisis.
The man with the cigar, who seemed to have got all the praise he was
going to get on his 100th birthday a few years ago, is experiencing
quite a Renaissance" (Theatre critic Rüdiger Schaper in the Arts section
of the Berlin Tagesspiegel, 16th December 2002).

Never before in the history of the Federal Republic has a government
experienced such a dramatic collapse in support during its first 100
days in office: According to an opinion poll from the Forsa institute on
4th December, the Social Democrats would only get 27% of the vote if an
election were to be held at that time (in the 22nd September election
they got 38%). "I’ll increase your taxes, elected is elected, you can’t
sack me now, that’s the cool thing about democracy" sings the Gerd
Schröder voice impersonator Elmar Brandt in his "Tax song".
Significantly his CD, "The Gerd Show", has occupied the top spot in the
German music charts for weeks.

"I’m glad to be back in Berlin under the glass dome, back in the
constituency all I get is abuse". That’s how one SPD MP (Wolfgang
Grotthaus from Oberhausen in the weekly political magazine "Spiegel",
9th December 2002) expressed the anger in the constituencies. 40% of
those who voted SPD in September would stay at home if there were an
election today - this means that the masses turning away from the Social
Democrats would not bring a large swelling of support for the Christian
Democrats.

Besides Hesse, state elections are also due on 2nd February in the state
of Lower Saxony. "If, in the current political climate, the Chancellor’s
home state is also lost, the alarm bells will be ringing in Berlin.
Schröder will have to get used to the idea of fighting against a
Conservative-dominated Bundesrat for the rest of his term of office (the
Bundesrat is a second chamber beside the Bundestag, the national
parliament, in which the governments of the individual federal states
are represented. At the moment, the traditionally largest bourgeois
party, the Christian Democratic Union, has a narrow majority in the
Bundesrat). It is not entirely unlikely that if this happens, Schröder
will go straight to the CDU/CSU (the CSU is the Union’s party in
Bavaria) and attempt a ’Grand coalition’ with them to push through the
necessary reforms." (Handelsblatt, 13.12.02).

Growing parts of the working class have been gripped by a sense of
crisis. For some time, a feeling of betrayal by the political
establishment in general and the governing SPD and Green parties in
particular has been spreading. The fear of further job and welfare
cutbacks and the anger at the one sided class struggle from above will
not overshadow the concerns about a possible war with Iraq, but it is
growing in significance week by week, day by day, and could become the
dominant issue, at least so long as the Bush administration does not
begin with military strikes against Saddam Hussein.

The Schröder/Fischer government has ridden itself into a crisis not only
on the domestic front (as regards the lack of public funds and the
climbing social fever) but also with their foreign policy. Even though
the government has guaranteed the USA use of military bases in German
and the right to over fly German airspace as well as being co-operative
with the ongoing war preparations, the foreign policy pursued by the
German government (resulting from Schröder’s desperate last ditch
attempt to win an election he seemed set to lose) cannot please the
German bourgeoisie. "The situation wasn’t very serious. It was just a
half-sentence from Mr. Wolfowitz, that the USA would need the help of
AWACS reconnaissance planes from NATO in the event of an attack on Iraq;
a slight cough was sufficient to send Red-Green into feverish fit ... if
the government goes on like this, it will no longer be taken seriously
as a partner. There certainly can be no more talk of a partner in
leadership " (Berlin Tagesspiegel , 11th December 2002).

The Red-Green government is not presenting a united front. The right
wing of the SPD, organised around the Seeheim Group, is already
considering the possibility of a Grand Coalition, without Schröder, with
the current SPD economics minister Clement as leader. Various ministers
stab each other in the back in public. The Greens shot down their party
leaders at their party conference at the beginning of December. All this
does not paint a picture of a freshly confirmed government with
everything under control.

The protests of public sector workers in the course of the pay dispute
are more and more becoming demonstrations of dissatisfaction against the
Schröder government. The union speakers at the ver.di (the giant public
sector, transport, finance, media and shop workers union) demonstration
on the 5th of December in Bremen were repeatedly interrupted by shouts
of "Eichel must go". These slogans, aimed at the SPD finance minister
Hans Eichel, are reminiscent of the "Kohl must go" shouts heard on
demonstrations in the mid nineties. At that time the protests against
Kohl’s wealth redistribution policy culminated in a march to Bonn, then
Germany’s seat of government, by 500,000 workers in the summer of 1996,
spontaneous strikes involving 100,000 metalworkers to defend their right
to sick pay in the autumn of 1996, and blockades of roads and bridges by
miners in the Rhine and Ruhr areas in 1997. Then, the trade union
bureaucracy managed to smother the protests by reminding people of the
possibility of a change of government in the upcoming general election
of 1998.

Even if the resistance is just beginning now, the union leadership is
lacking this room to manoeuvre which they had then.

"Beginnings of class struggle"

Immediately after the general election, the pay negotiations for the
public sector began. (The government and trade union leadership had
deliberately fixed the end of the old wage deal for the weeks after the
election date). The union leadership, despite claims for increases of 6%
coming from their membership, put forward the goal of getting a "three
in front of the decimal point", i.e. at least a 3% rise. But the union
leaders were forced into adopting a more radical tone by the massive
pressure from below during the token strikes.

For example, the head of the largest public sector union ver.di, Frank
Bsirske said in speeches delivered at various demonstrations: "What we
don’t need is saving for Gloria (von Thurn und Taxis) and for the
Holtzbrinck family with an estimated family fortune of five to six
billion euros." This led the Minister-President of the state of Hesse,
Roland Koch (CDU), when speaking in the state parliament, to compare the
unions’ campaign for a reintroduction of a wealth tax, which would bring
15 billion euro of extra public funds, to the persecution of Jews under
the Nazis: "Stop misleading people that it would only affect a few reach
people. The way Mr. Bsirske did it on television yesterday, naming the
names of individuals, like some kind of new star on their chest: they
are the rich, the ones who should pay."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the most important publication of
German Capital, commentated as follows on 13th December: "This is an
improper comparison, because the persecution of Jews under Hitler bares
no comparison. Koch’s later apology was compelling. However, anyone who
thinks that ’Parallels to other times’ should be banned as a matter of
principal, is curtailing the power of history as an instructor today’s
politics. If Koch had in his speech recalled the beginnings of the class
struggle, no one would have been entitled to get angry, certainly not in
those parties, who intentions in this regard are not entirely distant
from this. That struggle also started with accusations against the
rich." This reaction to a trade union leader who saw himself forced to
come out with a few home truths at the beginning of a wage dispute
illustrates that the first beads of sweat are already appearing on the
foreheads of some representatives of the ruling class.

"Beginnings of the class struggle" in Germany were noticeable even
before the pay negotiations for the public sector started. Throughout
the whole year of 2002, one sector after another saw an increase in
token strikes (retail, printing, banking, at the Postal Service and
Telekom) and proper strikes (in the metal and building industries).
These measures are all the more remarkable given that they occurred
during an economic crisis and directly before a general election.

The work stoppages in the building sector were particularly noteworthy,
since a strike was carried out in a sector that has been gripped by
crisis since the middle of the nineties.

The strikes and labour disputes in Germany have not nearly reached the
same level as in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece or other European
countries. But on the other hand, the most powerful working class on the
continent with the most tradition for the international labour movement,
has not been weakened as much as their colleagues in other countries. In
the last 20 years, there was no effort by the German ruling class to
weaken the working class comparable to that in Britain under Margaret
Thatcher with her attack on the miners and the entire British labour
movement. Even if Capital and governments have agreed on "Social
partnership" and have accelerated the class struggle from above, the
conditions in Germany are comparably better than in most other leading
capitalist countries. Since Germany is still dominated by industry, the
German working class has potentially a much larger economic strength.
The industrial metalworkers union with its 2.5 million members is the
second largest individual trade union on the planet - after the public
sector union ver.di (the trade union umbrella organisation, the DGB, has
a total of eight million members).

In the work places and unions, there is currently a collision between
enormously increased militancy and readiness to fight on behalf of the
employees and the selling out of basic trade union positions on the part
of the trade union bureaucracy. The limited nature of the struggles so
far is not down to a lack of anger or determination, rather on the
contrary, it is the result of a fear spreading among the trade union
bureaucracy that more widespread disputes may become unable to control.

However, the cauldron is boiling so much that the bureaucracy is finding
it more and more difficult to stop fighting measures being taken. Due to
the extent of the economic crisis and the extent if the attacks on all
aspects of the standard of living - together with the experiences of
Red-Green and the trade union leadership - the consciousness of the
working class will develop in leaps and bounds. The international labour
disputes, which the trade union leadership deliberately avoided
mentioning at the most recent demonstrations, can be seen as a major
encouragement. At a nationwide demonstration by ver.di on December 5th
in Bremen, fire fighters carried a self-painted banner with the message:
"An English labour struggle is possible here too! We’re ready! And
that’s a promise!" The decision to take a token strike by kitchen staff
in a Stuttgart hospital was marked by the striking workers singing the
song "Avanti Popolo".

Furthermore the anger at the continued military proliferation (the
"defence budget" was increased for 2003: armament projects like the
building of 60 military transport planes were agreed, the expenditure
for overseas military operations have multiplied by a factor of 10 under
Red-Green) will become an issue. Germany is not -yet- France. Still,
German workers and young people can vent their social protest through
anger at militarisation and war in the same way as their French
neighbours: A report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on December
9th about a large demonstration of tens of thousands of teachers, pupils
and parents in Paris said: "Teachers, but also parents associations and
pupils fear that the increased expenditure on internal security will
come at the expense of the education system."

Threat of public sector strike

The current pay round in the public sector could bring all the stored up
anger of the working class to the surface. A strike could work as a
catalyst for struggles against the closures and redundancies, against
local authority cuts and further attacks on social security.

More than eight million are directly or indirectly affected by the pay
negotiations, twenty per cent of the working population of Germany. The
unions have made a claim of "three per cent plus x", which is around the
same as the settlements achieved in the industrial sector this year.
Apart from this, the process of bringing wages in the eastern Germany up
to the level of the west is to be completed by 2007 (A western refuse
collector, married with one child, earns 1.789,74 euro before tax, in
the east it is only 1579,31 euro including bonuses). These claims are
everything but likely to mobilise people. What will mobilise people are
the provocations by the employers. The Federal government and the
negotiators from state and local authorities are looking for a pay
freeze. Leading SPD politicians have publicly declared that every
percentage point of a wage increase would cost hundreds of thousands of
jobs. The employers even go so far as to demand wage cuts: cuts in
holiday and Christmas bonuses and measures which amount to a gradual
burying of the concept of collective wage agreements.

A nasty compromise cannot be ruled out, preventing a larger strike at
the last minute. However, the employers’ room for manoeuvre is limited -
as long as they don’t start picking a quarrel with Capital. Confronted
with empty coffers, record debt and forced administration in a growing
number of local authorities, the water really is up to their necks.

At the same time, the trade union leadership is under increasing
pressure from below. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commented on
December 17th under the headline "On course for conflict": "Even before
serious negotiations and long before the failure of talks, ver.di has
already threatened strikes, to blackmail the employers." ver.di is "only
considering its organisational interest and wants to use a labour
dispute to slow down its loss of members." Last year alone, ver.di lost
80.000 members. It is significant that the leader of the ver.di union,
Frank Bsirske, has linked the course and result of the dispute very
closely with his own personal position.

" ’That man is not to be envied’ or ’I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes’
- that’s what other union leaders are saying about him. In ver.di’s
predecessor union, the ÖTV, it was anger from the membership at the
results of pay rounds that, at least indirectly, cost union leaders
Wulf-Mathies and Herbert Mai their positions." (Handelsblatt, December
10th 2002). Indeed, both of Bsirske’s predecessors had to resign due to
anger at the pay settlements of 1992 (Wulf-Mathies) and 2000 (Herbert
Mai). While Wulf-Mathies ignored the majority vote of the membership to
reject a compromise and therefore continue a two-week strike, in the
case of Mai the fact that the bureaucratic fusion of several unions to
form the "United service union ver.di" two years ago caused substantial
resistance among large sections of the membership. The events of
previous years forced Bsirske to talk about the 2000 wage round during
the token strikes, and to a certain extent distance himself from the
then union leader Mai. The union leadership also saw itself forced to
include 200 000 workers in the token strikes in the first half of
December.

On December 9th, Der Spiegel recalled the public sector wage dispute of
1974, which was decisive in contributing to the resignation of
Chancellor Brandt (SPD). "The legendary wage round of 1974 is
unforgotten, when the heavyweight trade union leader Heinz Kluncker
forced through a wage increase of eleven per cent for public sector
workers - and in doing so spelled the beginning of Willy Brandt’s
political demise."

In this dispute, the employees face not only further setbacks in their
standard of living if the employers get their way, it will also leave
hundreds of thousands of people in a situation where they will have to
get themselves into debt if they want to allow their children a decent
education or if they are confronted with a case of serious illness in
the family. Further deterioration of working conditions will lead more
and more to question whether than can continue to work at all in the
long term.

The extent to which the mood has already become radicalised is shown by
the willingness of civil servants to participate in the struggle during
this pay round. The majority of teachers, police officers and fire
fighters in Germany count as "Servants of the State" ("BeamtInnen") with
no right to strike. The German civil servants association, less an
employee’s representative body and more of an organisation of a
professional group which does not belong to the DGB trade union
federation, called a nationwide demonstration of 40 000 civil servants
on December 14th in Berlin. Demands for civil servants to be given the
right to strike were made at various demonstrations in the past days. At
the first major nationwide demonstration in Bremen, trade unions even
distributed symbolic certificates with the inscription: "We hereby award
the civil servant ____ the right to strike from now on for the rest of
their life". It is definitely possible that civil servants could break
the ban on them striking during future pay disputes in Germany.

What is certain is that a storm is brewing in the public sector. Strikes
will give the workers valuable experience, raise class consciousness and
could encourage militancy in other sectors. If the union bureaucracy
does manage to prevent a strike and accepts a bad compromise, that step
would, given the background of conflicts inside public sector unions in
the last ten years - certainly lead to an enormous polarisation inside
ver.di. The "Network for a fighting and democratic ver.di", a national
internal opposition group in the union, in which members of the SAV
(Sozialistische Alternative) play an important role, will have a pivotal
role to play.

Generalisation of the protests required

The SAV holds the view that the attacks by government and capital and
the looming war against Iraq call for mass mobilisation. The SAV calls
for an all-out strike in the public sector. Besides this, the SAV
spreads the idea of a large nationwide trade union demonstration - a
march on Berlin, against all attacks by the ruling class and the
preparation of a one-day general strike. With regard to the planned
nationwide anti-war demonstration on February 15th in Berlin, the SAV is
supporting the idea of calling for a massive involvement of trade
unions. However, what is most necessary is to provide answers to
political questions. There is no way around explaining why welfare cuts
and war have the same causes. The SAV links the struggle for a socialist
program against the capitalist crisis with the slogan of building a new
worker’s party.

A "Hot Winter" is possible

The Red-Green government has its back to the wall. In the first 100 days
it was confronted with openly conducted trench warfare between different
parts of the governing parties, speculation about the formation of a
Grand Coalition, a de facto resignation threat from Chancellor Schröder
and the failure of the Green Party leadership at the recent party
conference. New bad signs in the form of factory closures, mass
redundancies at a major company such as Fiat in Italy, a bankruptcy like
that of United Airlines recently, a war against Iraq or an escalation in
the public sector pay dispute - any of these possible developments could
seriously jeopardise the survival of the Red-Green government. Due to
the lack of a worker’s party at national level, the upcoming state
elections could see dramatic losses for the SPD and the Greens together
with temporary vote increases for the traditional bourgeois parties.

Despite the anger and disappointment about the behaviour of the PDS in
government at local and state level (Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern),
a mainly passive increase in support for the PDS cannot be ruled out.
However, the next phase will see an increase of interest in class
struggle orientated and anti-capitalist ideas among larger sections of
workers and young people. Since there are currently no corresponding
forces at party-political level for the working class, this
radicalisation will express itself chiefly in the form of trade union
and social protest. If the US government does see itself forced to
shelve its plans to attack Iraq, the social question could overshadow
the anti-war movement in Germany over the next few months. Given this
background, it is possible, that Germany is in for a "Hot Winter" over
the next few weeks. From the upcoming struggles, there may develop the
first signs of a new worker’s party, and that idea may find wider
dissemination and support.